The Lovely Gaze Where Every Eye Doth Dwell
by Mme Bahorel
Summary: Class is only one marker of difference as Feuilly attempts to find his appropriate place in society. Mild AU.
1. Chapter 1

The first time Feuilly put on a skirt, he was nine years old. Babet had thrown a wadded garment at him and snarled, "Put that on. And look sweet."

"How much?"

"A third of the take."

"Half." He had been with Babet almost as long as he could remember, and public work was usually negotiable.

"A third or nothing."

Feuilly shrugged – it had been worth a try – and unfurled the wad of cloth. "What the hell?"

"Just put it on and don't let anyone see your prick."

He changed clothes in the corner of the café. The memory that remained was not of the colour of the dress, or Babet's haranguing, but the way the fabric flowed delightfully across his bare legs and prick.

"Cover your chest. You're supposed to be a girl, for god's sake, show a little modesty."

"A little what?" Feuilly was too enthralled in swishing his skirt to really care. It was vastly better than Babet's previous attempts to dress him up for a scheme.

"Be sweet," Babet threatened. "Sweet little girls get more money."

So that was the scam – begging. Whatever, Feuilly thought. He had been asked to do worse before. Begging was easy, and always more profitable under Babet's direction. A good afternoon's work, in a swell costume, that was all.

He was not prepared for what happened next, however. "Ow! What the hell?"

"Get back here, you damned brat. Someone's got to get your hair in order!" Babet had made an ineffectual attempt with a hairbrush. Luckily for Feuilly, Mireille walked in, and her broad hips made an efficient barricade.

"What on earth is going on? The boy in a dress? What the hell are you up to?"

"Trying to brush his hair, the lousy little twerp."

"There's nothing wrong with my hair!" Feuilly claimed.

"That's not going to do any good." Mireille took a broken comb out of her pocket. "Come here, my dear. This won't hurt if you can stand still."

Indeed, Mireille was gentle, though Babet started pacing impatiently over the amount of time it took for her to get the tangles out of Feuilly's long, matted curls. "Look, you want in?" he finally asked.

"In what?"

"Do that on the street, I'll give you half."

"Half is more than you're giving me!" Feuilly complained.

"Half my share. Come on, think about it. Mother and daughter, striving to respectability, can't afford a bite of bread but they've still got some pride."

"So that's what this is. A stakeout masked by begging."

"What the hell else would I be doing with the boy in a dress?"

"I can think of plenty." Feuilly idly wondered what Mireille meant by "plenty", but he never bothered to ask.

"Are you in or out?"

"I'm in."

Feuilly had no idea what Mireille was doing to his hair, but she helped him arrange his dress nicely. And whatever she did, it worked. Babet would send gentlemen their way, and Feuilly would dance about in the dust and look as sweet as ever he could be, and tell the gentlemen that Mireille was his mother, and she was ill, and please, could they help? The take was better than whenever he went out alone, and Mireille even gave him part of her share. But Babet took the dress away in the end and only ever brought it out twice more. Those three times were Feuilly's best memories of childhood, particularly as he had once managed to get a glimpse of himself in a shop window and thought Babet was right, he did look rather sweet with his long curls and the baggy dress.

The fourth time he put on a dress was supposed to be a lark. One of the boys in the workshop had a sister who had just been left by her man. It was thought that the best way to make an ass of him was to send him one of the he-shes who sometimes walked the Tuileries, but they had no funds. They did have two girls who would loan a best dress and bonnet to the plan, but someone had to wear them. Four young men and three girls crowded around a café table, arguing over who was most suited.

It was Sylvie who confiscated Feuilly's hair ribbon. "Come on, let's see what it all really looks like."

It was embarrassing to let his hair down in full company, especially when Fanny turned him towards her and started arranging it. He enjoyed the girls playing with his hair, but it was not really an activity for a café evening. And it was even more embarrassing that their crowd grew silent and stared at what he assumed was Fanny's handiwork.

Anne-Marie, the jilted one, nodded. "Yes. It'll have to be you. There's no other choice. The whiskers will have to go, and we ought to pluck your eyebrows. Who's closest to your size? Sylvie or Fanny?"

Everyone was still staring, but so long as Anne-Marie wanted her revenge, Feuilly could not withdraw from the plot. His reputation might take a beating from how well or ill performed the masquerade turned out to be, but with his experience, he could move on more easily than poor Anne-Marie and her growing stomach, or that utter cad Renaud Caret who had got her into that state. And the asked-for sacrifice was truly minimal so long as he did not seem too eager to put on Fanny's best dress. The whiskers were no sacrifice at all, being a concession to masculinity that he had never been entirely certain looked right anyway.

Saturday night came soon enough, with a visit to the barber for a shave and then to Fanny's room, where she would serve as hairdresser and maid. Feuilly said nothing in his nervousness; she was voluble in hers. She ripped out what felt like half his eyebrows and forced him to strip down so he could put on petticoats and she could see how much attention would have to be paid to his body. He had never had the full efflorescence of body hair that would have marked him as truly masculine, so Fanny managed well enough only with her tweezers across his back and shoulders. A razor would not have taken so long or caused so many tiny dots of pain.

Only then was he permitted to try on the dress, a beautiful lavender gown with a full foot of embroidered trim on the skirt, the shoulders completely exposed with the merest hint of puffed sleeve over the arm. "I always meant to recut that neckline and never did. Thank goodness for small favours, at any rate," Fanny said as she stuffed a couple of stockings into the bodice to make up for his lack of breasts. Fanny had lovely breasts and should have been sporting a gown that emphasised her décolletage, but anyone lucky enough to get society hand-me-downs was hardly in a position to complain when such a beautiful gown came from a girl who had not had Fanny's natural graces. The neck line was low enough to be suitable for evening but high enough to admit for stockings rather than breasts, and only a small strip of his chest had to be quickly shaved to accommodate it. She finished off the ensemble with a ribbon tied around his neck to mask the adam's apple as best she could.

Once he was dressed, Fanny turned her attention to his hair. She started in silence, but soon enough the complaints came out again, and every time he tried to turn to look in her small mirror, she firmly put his head back at the angle in which she preferred to work. "Why can't your hair be longer and less thick?" she complained as she fought with his back hair, having already portioned out curls for the sides. He said nothing. The fact was that they were lucky have him at all and not someone who would have to hide under a bonnet. Fanny kept poking at his scalp with a frightening number of hairpins, muttering all the time about how to hold it all in place when it wasn't quite long enough to gather at the crown. Nevertheless, she at last was satisfied enough to pull out her powder box and give his face and neck a thorough dusting, followed by an application of rouge that might well have involved painting an entirely new face, it took so long. All Feuilly could tell was that she kept frowning over her handiwork, and even when she set aside all her pots and poufs, she did not look satisfied.

"Well, there you are," she finally said. "I'm as much an artist as you, if I say so myself."

He was finally permitted to look in the mirror, and that permission made him terribly scared. What had she managed to do? Was it all going to be for naught? The scheme would never work if he still looked boyish. And the powder and paint made his skin feel dry and tight, as if he had been transformed into a mask that might crack at any movement. The hairpins digging into his scalp gave him no confidence, either, as if his thick curls would soon burst their bounds and leave him looking disordered and out of place. Only the deliciously heavy silk dress was at all comfortable. But he finally dared to look and ended up quickly looking back to Fanny in shock. She stood there staring at him, looking rather glum, her chin in her hand, as if she had failed when she had, in fact, produced a masterpiece. He looked back in the mirror. He was himself, yet not at all himself. The long struggle with powder and rouge had been to soften some of the lines of his face without leaving it looking mask-like at all. His eyebrows were beautifully thinned into a perfect arch. She had managed to pin his too-long sidelocks so that they framed his face but fell only to his ears, the length hidden in the rest of the mass of his hair. The effect was not entirely à la mode, but it was attractive in a feminine way. Yes, the shape of his nose and the line of his jaw were still the same, but in Fanny's hands, he had become not only a girl, but a pretty one. Slowly and unconsciously, he began to smile.

"Smile with your lips closed," she snapped. "Your mouth's too wide otherwise."

He pulled her close, delighting in the rustle of two sets of petticoats, and kissed her firmly on the lips in gratitude and elation. This effect was so far beyond any childish interest in skirts that he would gladly have done more than just kiss her.

She did manage to smile a little after disentangling herself from his arms. "Thank god, there is a man left in you. Let me dress myself, then we'll go. You'll have to learn to walk, and while I've got a shawl for you, no one had an extra fan."

"That's all right. I liberated one from the workshop." He found it in his pocket and fumbled to snap it open.

Fanny giggled at his incompetence, and he grinned. "Lips closed, remember," she reminded him.

"Oh, hell," he complained.

"You'll have to listen to one of us. Christ, I can't look at you. It's too wrong." She turned away and started unbuttoning her dress. "Just let me get dressed, then we'll go." Throwing the evening dress she had borrowed from yet another friend over her head, she kept talking. "Control is all you need. Men don't control themselves. You need to watch where you step, smile just a little, know exactly how low your shawl is dangling at all times. Control."

Control, he reminded himself. Let on no pleasure but that which is permitted. Allow no one to see the difference between what is natural to you and what belongs in nature.

With a sigh and something of a jealous glare, as her borrowed dress fit her worse than her dress fit Feuilly, Fanny led him to the Montplaisir, the way being taken up with teaching him how to walk properly rather than to revel in every silken swish of the beautiful gown. Feuilly found it surprisingly easy to imitate Fanny, particularly in how her movements accentuated the rustle of the petticoats, but it was terribly hard to do it without concentrating on it exclusively.

They were behind their time, Fanny's art having taken longer than planned, and everyone was waiting for them at the gate. "We've been waiting for ages! Where were you? Where is -" And jaws dropped as they realised Feuilly was the other girl. He spun around in a delightful swish of silk, then dropped a curtsy as Fanny had taught him, perfectly willing to admit at the moment that he was showing off. The dress felt exquisite, particularly in the heft of the skirt swirling around his legs and prick. Then he attempted to bid them good evening in a tone somewhat higher than his ordinary voice but not in an utterly fake falsetto.

"Jesus Christ, Fanny, what the hell did you do to him?" Picard asked.

"It wasn't my idea in the first place," Feuilly snapped in his natural voice, "and it wasn't hers, either. One of us was going to do it. Upset it isn't you?" He was rather glad he had been the one elected, but he could not help wanting to defend Fanny against insinuations that ought to belong to him alone.

Fanny, however, was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. "Turns out, if you dress a man up, he discovers manners. Who could have known?" she asked with a devastating sweetness.

"Let's just find him and get this over with so no one has to figure out who you are," François Ebrard, Anne-Marie's brother, suggested to calm everyone down.

"Come along," Anne-Marie said, taking Feuilly's hand. "Giggling passel of girls."

"And he'll see me with you."

"If we keep to the dimmer paths, keep our voices down, and show you off as much as possible, he'll notice you, not us. You can't be alone, otherwise you'll get picked up for soliciting."

Starting the evening with a prostitution arrest would not at all assist the plan, or Feuilly's future, so he went along. It was rather amusing to be surrounded by girls and permitted all sorts of familiarities. Indeed, to be encouraged in familiarities, as girls constantly hung off one another, bowed their heads low to share secrets whispered with lips against ears, even to adjust one another's hair and have Anne-Marie share some of the flowers in her hair with him. He wished he could see himself again, wondering what the little white flowers might look like against his darker hair.

At a pre-arranged signal, the girls left him and went off with their men, Anne-Marie temporarily being partnered by her brother. They would keep an eye on Feuilly from a distance and reappear only when the damage to Caret had been done. It was strange, and a bit frightening, being alone, walking along the lantern-lit path towards the bright dance floor, knowing that everyone would think him in the wrong for what he was doing, particularly if they knew he was starting to like not only the skirt and petticoats but also the way the slight breeze felt on his bare neck and shoulders and the scent of the flowers in his hair. It would be thoroughly delightful if only he were not in a place where one wrong step might lead to a fistfight.

The plan had been sound, however, based on Anne-Marie's long knowledge of her lover, for Feuilly had not long to walk, head down, concentrating on looking forlorn as well as on how he walked, before Caret stepped in to play the gallant.

"Your friends have left you."

"They have their men," Feuilly sighed.

"Come, a pretty girl like you doesn't have a man?"

Feuilly looked up through his lashes, trying to play at any gesture that had ever taken him toward a girl in a pleasure garden. "Not everyone is so lucky, monsieur."

"Should you like a dance? I say we ought to wipe all their eyes, you and me on the dance floor."

Feuilly smiled, remembering at the last moment that he must be controlled, to keep his lips closed and his expression soft. "I should like that very much."

Caret offered his arm, and Feuilly took it lightly, hoping that if anything was noticed, it would be the length of his fingers rather than the possibly large size of his palms. He was grateful that he was, indeed, shorter than Caret, even if the dress was short enough it was showing off his ankles, though that was frequent enough at the Montplaisir. "What's your name, my dear?" Caret asked him.

Feuilly had utterly forgotten to think of a name. No one had said he ought to have a name. What in hell was he going to call himself? "Lydie," he replied, thinking mostly that he had to avoid saying Fanny's name because she was well known to Caret. Well, it was a whorish thing he was doing, leading a man to his doom for the profit of another person.

"Lydie. Beautiful. I'm called Renaud."

Luckily, the band came from Auvergne and played their local music for dancing. The Auvergnat dances were lately taking working class Paris by storm, but only the men of Auvergne could dance them with any felicity. They were ideally suited for the fast and drunk, with rapid movements but without the careful patterns of a quadrille or closeness of a waltz, so that to fail rather poorly was part of the charm. The better bands played on Sundays and sometimes on Mondays, and then one could dance properly, but Saturdays and Auvergnat bands were a delightful end to the working week. Feuilly could not lead terribly well in these dances, so it was somewhat easier to remember that he ought to follow. The movements were also rapid enough that conversation was more difficult, so that he had to say much less to Caret than if they had come the following evening. He did manage to point out Anne-Marie, who was dancing now with Trioux. "There is a lovely blonde girl staring at us."

Caret looked, returned Anne-Marie's glare with one of his own, and turned back to Feuilly. "She is no one. Possibly she is jealous of your beauty."

If Feuilly could have blushed on cue, he would have at that moment. Unfortunately, he could only look down and pretend to be hiding a smile. "You flatter me, monsieur."

"Only because you deserve it."

Feuilly did manage to claim fatigue when the band started to make an attempt at a waltz. He was not so certain that the close form would not expose that his breasts were stockings, and he had no confidence that he could remember not to lead. He was rather sad about it, because he greatly enjoyed the feel of the skirt and rather wanted to experience how it would move in the sweep of the waltz, but it was better not to be caught. Caret even fetched him a glass of champagne, a sign that he was not yet done attempting to seduce "Lydie".

Feuilly carefully unfolded his fan while Caret was gone, so that he was prepared to enact the overheated girl upon his return. He had to be careful with the fan, as it was painted only on one side and had to be returned on Monday so that it might be completed and sold. It was much easier to snap the fan closed when Caret returned than it had been to open it.

"Shall we walk out into the gardens? It will be cooler there," Caret suggested, almost on cue.

Feuilly nodded his assent. He refrained from looking back to see if the others were following. It was time to trust that they were aware of the way in which the plan was moving forward. Indeed, he ran into Picard taking a piss into the bushes around the dance floor, and a nod and a grin from the man gave him confidence that they were not going to leave him to his own humiliation.

Caret tried to force him into conversation as they strolled further and further away from dance floor. Feuilly managed to reply that he was a seamstress, that he had come to Paris from Champagne, immediately cursing himself silently for coming up with no better locale than what he had just been drinking, that he liked the freedom of the city very much, indeed. He hoped that this last answer would be what Caret needed in order to attempt to take advantage of him, and he even suggested that they stop a moment so he might rest on a nearby bench.

To sit on a bench in the Montplaisir was as much as to suggest that the bench be used for something more exciting than merely resting tired feet. Indeed, Caret sat very close, so that they were thigh to thigh, and put one arm around Feuilly's waist. Feuilly leaned in, as the keen girls did, and turned his face slightly towards Caret. He expected the kiss, he knew that the plan required the kiss, possibly many kisses and quite a lot more, but the actual kiss came as a surprise. Feuilly had never been kissed by a man, and it was odd and not at all right that a kiss be given by someone with thick lips, who had not shaved in two days, who pressed his case clumsily and with force. The kiss brought to mind everything that was wrong in the masquerade when so much was otherwise right. But Feuilly played along, wondering how many girls disliked such kisses yet continued because they did not know what else to do.

He accepted several more kisses, not only on the lips but on the neck and even a nibble at the ear that was accompanied by the grip of Caret's other hand on his thigh, dangerously close to where his fingers might discover Feuilly's prick. Feuilly feared he was sweating profusely from the danger, he hated the flick of Caret's tongue at his neck, yet he stayed in place and permitted what was happening to happen. He wanted very much to turn and punch Caret in the jaw, yet the plan was that Caret had to make the discovery himself, that he had to know in his soul that he had brought the humiliation on himself through his deliberate pursuit of a girl who turned out not to be a girl. Anne-Marie was insistent on that score, and Anne-Marie had to be watching. While earlier, Feuilly had feared that the clothes and the situation might bring him to a state of sexual excitement, the actual attempt at sex was leaving him as limp as anything. Only the memory of how Caret had abandoned Anne-Marie, pregnant with his child, not a week before and was attempting to do the same to "Lydie" kept him locked to the bench.

That hand on his thigh started to migrate upward while Caret buried his face in Feuilly's bare, lightly perfumed shoulder. In fear of what might now happen, Feuilly clutched at the edge of the bench, the only thing he could grab on to other than Caret's hulking, sweaty body that any moment was about to discover that "Lydie" had a prick. But Caret moved his hand no closer, stopping just before he might note that fatal bit of flesh. He was taking his time, and Feuilly could not take the suspense.

Instead, he took the initiative. "Stopping so soon, Renaud? Surely you are burning as I must be," he breathed as sweetly as possible. "Come," he said more loudly, so that anyone lurking in the shadows nearby could hear, "you and I both know what you want." He took Caret's hand and placed it directly between his spread legs.

Caret pulled his hand away as if he had touched a hot stove. "What the fuck?"

Feuilly stood, in case he needed to run or fight. "Yes, fuck." He started to hike his skirt. "Why not right here? Everyone else does." Indeed, the shadows of any Paris pleasure garden were filled with copulating couples as the night progressed. For many, it was the most privacy they could muster in their lives of shared rooms and nosy boarding house keepers. But Feuilly turned his back and bowed his head. He would blow it all if he were too forward, and he must pretend to modesty, even if he had gathered his skirt and petticoats at the waist, showing off his prick to any passers by, should anyone happen along this particular path. "Please forgive me, monsieur. A girl, all alone in this city, sometimes I burn so hard for a man's touch."

Caret certainly burned hard for a woman's touch, for he took Feuilly from behind, his erection poking at Feuilly's buttocks. "Oh, Renaud, thank you," Feuilly breathed as he grabbed Caret's hand and thrust his prick through Caret's fingers, not giving Caret enough time to grab him in horror or revenge.

Anne-Marie stumbled out of the darkness at that point. "This is what you leave me for?" Caret was frozen as he was caught with his arms around Feuilly. "Well, I suppose you can't get him pregnant!" Ebrard was right behind her, and soon Picard and Fanny appeared with Trioux and Sylvie, though the latter couples stayed on the edge of the shadows, outlines more than identifiable figures until they spoke their rehearsed parts.

"What's going on?" Trioux asked.

Feuilly had pulled away from Caret by that point, even if he was still flashing his prick at the cad. "Renaud Caret's got himself a he-she!" Sylvie laughed. "No wonder you left Anne-Marie," she sneered. "But François' got a prick if that's what you prefer!"

Caret attempted to punch Feuilly, but Feuilly had been waiting for the inevitable fight ever since he had taken Caret to the bench. He ducked and gave Caret a swift uppercut to the jaw, the heft of the bone reminding him that he had not been in a knockdown fight in far too long. He was never going to get his footing properly if he had to be careful of Fanny's silk dress, but luckily, Ebrard and Trioux stepped in to chase off their victim.

Anne-Marie gave Feuilly a kiss on the cheek. "You were brilliant."

"I was scared to fucking death."

"Who can blame you?" Picard answered. "That was not something I ever want to watch again."

"It's not something I ever want to do again." One lock of Feuilly's hair had come loose at last in the agitation and was falling in his eye. He rather feared the entire disguise was going to turn out like that bit of hair, loose and pathetic now that the plot had succeeded.

Ebrard and Trioux came hurrying back. "We'd better get out of here before he finds a cop."

"Too true."

Yet they walked back as a troupe and settled down in Fanny's room, taking up the entire floor as well as the bed and her one chair, to drink champagne directly out of the bottle as a toast to their success, particularly their success in getting back to Fanny's room without attracting undue attention from the police.

"Do you think he'll figure it out?" Picard asked.

"He can't have the police on my back," Feuilly explained. "We didn't do anything illegal. By this point, he'll never be able to prove I was a prostitute, and I'm allowed to walk around in whatever ridiculous get up I want." He was still wearing the dress, and the makeup, though the annoying hairpins had been removed at last.

"You did punch him," Ebrard reminded him.

"Fair point. But can you imagine that police complaint? He'd have to admit to having been taken in by a bloke in a dress."

Sylvie passed him the bottle. "You were much too brilliant for your own good. 'I burn for a man's touch.'" She fell to giggling.

Feuilly took a long drink and passed the bottle to Fanny. "What if I said I burn for your touch?" he said seriously.

She grabbed the bottle. "I'd say wash your face, then we'll see if I can look at you."

The bottle made another round as he did, indeed, scrub the rouge and powder away. He desperately wanted to make love to a woman, not even to wash off the sting of having been pawed by Renaud Caret, but to listen to silk against silk, to feel delicate fingers across the shaved part of his chest, and yes, to have Fanny's fingers entwined in his hair again. He was given the dregs of the bottle, the last drink before they would all have to separate for the evening.

"Will you all make it home?" Fanny asked her guests.

"We're fine," Ebrard said. "It's Feuilly lives furthest out."

She looked at Feuilly, still standing there in her dress but with his face scrubbed and his hair pushed behind his ears. "He's staying the night."

It was not silk on silk but cotton petticoats bunched together, the hem tickling his legs as he climbed across the bed to Fanny.

"You bastard," she told him, "you looked better in a dress than I did." He took her from behind, one hand on her delicious breasts as they expelled the sexual energy that had built up all night.

In the morning, he went home to his own tiny garret room. He stripped naked, wrapped a sheet around his waist, and shaved the rest of his chest, telling himself it was not a preparation for acquiring his own evening gown but merely a precaution towards permitting it all to grow back evenly.

On Monday, the boss looked at him funny, as did several of the other workers. "What happened?" the boss finally asked. It was impossible to hide his eyebrows, or the fact that he had shaved.

"Fancy dress party," Feuilly lied. "Ebrard's sister threw it."

"All true, monsieur," Ebrard answered when questioned.

"And what the hell were you supposed to be?"

"Marie Antoinette," Feuilly answered sarcastically. Ebrard laughed, but it was rather obvious that the boss was not amused by this treatment of the king's late sister-in-law. "Forgive me, it was a Greek benefit, and I was prevailed upon to act the Janissary. They are eunuchs, you know."

"I didn't know," the boss said warily.

"It's true. Fancy dress party. He was a Turk. I'll bring the robe tomorrow if you want to see it," Ebrard insisted.

Feuilly kept his position, but he felt it quite a close-run thing. There could be no more dressing up, not even looking longingly at Fanny's dresses and petticoats when she permitted him into her bed again.

Yet still he found himself the following Sunday watching the boys pace the Tuileries gardens as they looked for custom. He even played to them a bit, pretending to sketch them but really sitting there watching, his loose hair shadowing the page, as he admired their dresses and the felicity with which they conducted their masquerade. Perhaps one day, he would figure out just how to be one of them.


	2. Chapter 2

The boy called himself Gigi. Feuilly had spent all spring watching the boys, occasionally sketching them, always enthralled by their clothes and manners, and one day, Gigi sat down in the grass next to him and introduced himself. "You always come and you never talk, and you ain't police, so the girls wanted to know why. And I said they could mind their own business because you were mine."

Nervously, Feuilly looked down at the sketchbook he was suddenly clutching like a lifeline. Gigi on paper was a very different sort of ideal than Gigi in person; Gigi in person was a theatrical creature. Well, how could he not be, a boy dressed as a girl, prostituting himself very publicly? Prostitutes were always playing to what they thought a man's ideal should be; that was the real reason actresses were conflated with them.

"I didn't mean to scare you, dear," Gigi apologised. "Oh, bloody hell." Feuilly looked up in time to see the policeman headed in their direction. "Can't the bleeding coppers leave me be for five minutes?" He hopped to his feet and smoothed his yellow-flowered skirt, knocking a bit of grass out of the second row of whitework inset above the hem. "I shall see you again, shan't I, dear?"

"Yes," Feuilly answered unthinkingly. Gigi swanned off, demonstrating that he had patently not picked up any custom and deliberately not looking at the policeman so as not to be provoked into anything that might result in being taken in for a fine or a couple of days in jail. Feuilly buried himself in his sketchbook, hoping the policeman would not ask him anything. Once the policeman had passed on, Feuilly escaped the gardens entirely. He had been too obvious and must not return. Particularly if the police were going to examine him carefully and notice that he had been keeping his eyebrows carefully plucked. Only the sissy boys cared that much about their appearance in that way, much to Feuilly's embarrassment. Had he not proved to Fanny, several times now, that he was not a sissy boy?

Yet he did return the following Sunday, and ended up sketching a bit, until Gigi came up to him again. "I didn't scare you off, then. Good. You know, some of the girls are jealous as anything of you."

That got enough of Feuilly's attention that he at last looked straight into Gigi's face. "You can't be serious."

"If you ain't one of us, then you've got a job and a boss, and how on earth does he let you get away with such utterly divine hair?"

Feuilly did not entirely know the answer. Had his hair been a problem, he would not have been hired in the first place, so how could it become a problem? He shrugged. "Artistic work. I keep it tied back. If anyone's ever cared, they haven't said anything."

"You are too, too lucky." Gigi took a lock of Feuilly's hair and twisted it around his finger. Gigi's own hair was curled around his powdered and painted face, under the blue lining of his wide-brimmed bonnet. "Why aren't you one of us, dear?" he asked seductively.

Feuilly did not pull away even though he knew he ought. "I don't trick for a living."

"That's not what I mean. I never saw you before, and I'd remember you. You are like us. We're not all whores," he added, a little bitterly.

"But the police -"

"A whore takes money. The police assume we all do."

"So you're not a whore."

"I'm no better than I ought to be, and isn't that all any girl can really say?"

"Then why do you tramp the same paths as the prostitutes?"

"Why do you come here looking at us?" Gigi asked rhetorically. "It's a fine day to be outside."

"I've seen you in the rain."

"Not me, dear."

"No, not you in particular," Feuilly corrected in embarrassment. "The – girls." It felt odd to call them girls, but he couldn't say "he-she" to one, could he?

"We all have to make a living somehow." Gigi rolled his eyes. "Some of them would queue up for a pass if the government started licensing anything with a cock, the little sluts."

"And you?"

"Happen to be particular. And you ain't my type, so don't worry I'm trying to seduce you, dear. I don't often go for girls, with or without cocks." It was not the most reassuring statement, to in essence be called a girl by a boy wearing a dress and still playing with his hair, but Feuilly hadn't the time to be offended. Gigi had suddenly let him go and grabbed up his sketchbook instead. "Oh my, you are drawing us for real! Do I look this much a treat?"

Feuilly tried to grab it back, but Gigi was too quick. "It is an accurate likeness, I think."

He started flipping pages. "Oh, that slut. Nana looks a treat. How did you make Lène look so sad?"

Feuilly managed to grab his book back. "I just draw what I see." He started flipping pages to see that everything was intact, though Gigi had been careful as anything.

Gigi grabbed his hand as he caught sight of another drawing. "Hello. That's you, ain't it?"

Feuilly blushed a deep crimson. He had, a few weeks earlier, attempted to sketch what he thought he must have looked like in Fanny's evening dress. The shading was all wrong, he had only the memory of the dress to go by, he had never even been granted the opportunity to examine well the beautiful job she had done in painting his face, but it had seemed a way of extending the memory.

"I would die, simply die for a dress like that," Gigi sighed.

"Lavender satin. A full foot of trim around the skirt." Feuilly rather sighed at the memory.

"You must let me see you in it."

"Can't," he admitted. "It ain't mine."

"If you've only been playing pretend through drawing, and you want to do more, I can help you."

"Why would you do that?" he asked warily.

Gigi smiled. "I can be as catty as anyone if I must, but dear, sometimes being selfish as anything means helping someone else at the same time. You see, I'm simply dying to see you in drag, and you're simply dying to let it out, so why shouldn't you make me happy by making yourself happy?"

"I have a job. I can't afford to get sacked."

"So do I, dear. But slumming with the whores here isn't the only time and place to get dressed. We meet Wednesdays at Janvier's place off the rue de la Harpe. It's in an alley above the rue des Medicis."

Feuilly took a moment to think about it. There was nothing illegal in dressing up – he was not being pulled into any sort of police plot by a cleverly costumed informant. Gigi's exaggerated mannerisms were somehow both annoying and intoxicating; his manner of performing an idea of the female was not in the least passable yet was still true. The possibility of there being others was interesting. "Janvier's place?"

"Awful café, if I'm honest, but he lets us have the back room, and a room upstairs as a changing room."

"I haven't got any dress at all," Feuilly admitted.

Gigi patted his cheek. "We'll set you up proper, no need to fear." He stood to go. "These damned cops are going to be all over me because I've touched you. What's your name, dear? The bastards never let me ask."

"Feuilly."

"Not your birth name. Think of one before Wednesday. Eight o'clock. How can I introduce you around properly if you have no name?" He blew Feuilly a kiss and walked on.

Feuilly told himself that the whole thing was wrong, utterly wrong, no matter how tempting the offer was. Urges have to be repressed, otherwise what was the point in ever trying to be honest or good? If everyone gave vent to his urges, even those that seemed to hurt no one, that would be license, not freedom, and license would give way to anarchy. There had to be standards. And standards meant that men who were not prostitutes did not make fools of themselves dressing up in the back room of an awful café.

He went anyway. The image would be tawdry and disgusting and cure him of any desire to repeat the experiment. Gigi was right; Janvier's was an awful café. The windows looked as if they would fall out of their rotting panes before the year was out, the front room yellow with old smoke yet not smoky with new as there were too few patrons smoking. There were a few women, but they were women, prostitutes, their real breasts threatening to burst out of their bodices as they drank quickly before heading back out to the streets. The patrons seemed not to be considered custom. Feuilly felt horribly out of place, even in his cap and jacket, as he suspected he was rather better paid than anyone else in sight. But a high pitched, almost screaming laugh punctured the murmur of voices, and he noticed the table in the dark corner. Here were men in tall hats and long coats, as out of place as Feuilly but for a different reason. A man pushed past him and joined the back table, setting off a flurry of kisses in greeting. Feuilly knew he was staring, but he could not quite seem to move forward to see if they were who he sought or backward to leave the whole awful mess behind him.

Someone grabbed him around the waist and kissed his cheek. "I'm so glad you came, dear." Gigi, dressed not as Feuilly had always seen him, but in a dark coat and dark cravat and tall hat, his only concession to flamboyance two brightly patterned waistcoats. "I look horrid, I know. I warned you one has to work for a living." He had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. "Come meet the girls. How should I introduce you?"

"I – I don't know."

"Zora, you slut, he's not for you!" Gigi shouted to a young man of his own sort who was giving Feuilly a careful examination. "Come along, dear. Zora won't bite unless you want her to."

There were six or seven of them in the corner, all young, all dressed as if they must be clerks or shop boys in daily life, clean shaven with carefully trimmed eyebrows and some with rather long hair. They all had girls' names, and they all acted more girlish than any real girl Feuilly had ever met. Gigi called him a "pupil", and Feuilly felt awful as they clamoured around him. They were clerks and shop boys, and he had come straight from work in cap and jacket, proving that he was not like them in the least. If he had known, he would have gone home and arrived late in his Sunday clothes, but there was no help for that now.

"Show off a little," Gigi insisted, stealing his cap. It was for the labourer to do what the clerk asked, so Feuilly complied, letting down his hair with the distinct feeling that he was permitting himself to be ill used. Even as the company nearly sighed as one and started talking over each other in high pitched excitement and jealousy.

A rather big man in cap and short jacket soon joined them, kissing Gigi on the cheek. "Who's the new girl?"

"A new pupil, that's all."

Feuilly was rather glad there was someone else who was less "girl" and more "man" and distinctly the sort who must work with his hands.

"Where's the princess?"

"Am I her keeper?" Gigi was distinctly annoyed by the question.

A middle aged man in an apron finally interrupted. "Furniture's moved. All of you in the back," he ordered.

The back room was rather large, with the furniture having been pushed along the walls. In the corner, a door stood open, showing a stairwell lit with a single candle. One table already had a row of wine bottles and glasses on it so that the patrons of the back room would not have to be disturbed in their revels – or so the management would not have to look on them to serve them.

A few more men dropped in, all of them in caps and some even in smocks, which did explain why no one had yet treated Feuilly ill for his attire. Nearly everyone had a bag with him, and several bolted straight up the stairs.

"Just give them a minute, dear," Gigi told Feuilly. "Anyone that eager must be given her own way."

Another of the "girls", this one already in full drag, burst into the back room. "I thought I would never make it! Oh, hello, it's the boy from the gardens."

"Business going well?" Gigi asked rather tartly.

"You may suck it, my dear. I have had quite a good day, and if it were not that I loved you all too much, I might still be out there."

"She's run from the cops," Gigi explained to Feuilly.

"Suck it. Hello, darling, I'm called Nana."

Nana was apparently an actual prostitute, but the big man pulled him away into conversation on the other side of the room. Feuilly breathed a sigh of relief. He was starting to come around to Gigi, but all the attention was a bit much. He had never been in such company before and had not predicted that they played the women even when they were not dressed like women. It was an aspect of Paris that was entirely new to him, and he was uncertain if he hated it or if he could learn to accept it. He did not quite like it.

The boys who had been so eager to dress themselves returned at last, their finery proving quite varied. An evening gown that must be thirty years old stood next to a day dress of last year's fashion. Three of the four men wore bonnets or caps over their short hair, but the one in the ancient evening dress had combed his hair forward and wrapped a scarf around his head the way some women in the old paintings had done. The masquerade was more or less effective, but none of the boys seemed to care. They all had fans and some had reticules and it seemed the done thing to make a parade through the room before posing in a chair rather than merely sitting down.

"Come, dear, let's see what we can get you into."

Feuilly followed Gigi, the large man, and another boy up the narrow staircase. The room at the top was small and already filled with piles of male clothing, most treated roughly but an occasional bright waistcoat was carefully laid on top of an otherwise abandoned pile. Four or five candles in wall sconces lit the small space, and there was a mirror on one wall.

"You didn't forget it, did you?" the man asked the other boy.

"Do I look like an idiot?" He pushed a canvas bag into the man's hands. "I'm not taking it home again, though."

"I'll take it, dear," Gigi volunteered.

The others quickly stripped naked and shook out the contents of their bags. Feuilly could not imagine that the man would look anything other than mannish in the printed cotton gown he had, but the boy had a certain prettiness to him that might be well emphasised by the delicate pink of the dress from which he was shaking out the wrinkles.

"Let's have a look at you so we can see what from my bag of treasures might work. At least take your shirt off."

Feuilly was not entirely certain about Gigi's demands, but there was the promise of a bag of treasures. He carefully removed his jacket and shirt and was rewarded by the boy grabbing him from behind. "A pretty one indeed."

"Minette!" Gigi snapped, scandalised. "He is not for you."

"Sorry to have gotten my hands on your property."

"He's not mine, either. He can belong to whomever he wants. Or no one, like Sylvanie."

"Sylvanie belongs to his wife."

"Yes, I do," the man answered. "Except for these nights. Don't let them annoy you," he told Feuilly, his masculine voice in very queer contrast to the dress he was fastening. "They'll calm down soon enough. You'll relax once you're dressed, I'm sure." He gave Feuilly a friendly pat on the shoulder and went downstairs, leaving Feuilly utterly alone with the effeminate boys.

"Do you know what would be utterly divine?" Minette asked Gigi. Without waiting for a response, he continued, "Thin muslin. 90s. Marcie could do it up quickly, too."

Gigi shot down the notion with a sniff. "It would be cheap."

"It would be gorgeous."

"He has very good arms and shoulders, it's true. But something later and with colour. You want all the new girls to play the virgin."

"Only the pretty ones."

It was strange to be talked of as if he were a painting or a statue, as if he could not make his own decisions as to what would be best on his own person. Yet Feuilly had not the experience to decide what would look best, so they had to choose for him. But the manner of the discussion rubbed him the wrong way even as he was thoroughly cowed by their obvious expertise.

Gigi finally returned to addressing Feuilly. "Well, for the moment, dear, you'll borrow from me, and I can't offer you much choice tonight." The choices were a blue striped day dress he had seen Gigi wearing in the park or a pale yellow evening gown with appliqué flowers down the bust, neither entirely to Feuilly's taste the way Fanny's lavender dress had miraculously been, but both serviceable. He chose the evening gown.

Minette finally seemed to realise he was the only naked man in the room and put on his own costume, a pink evening dress with a Greek key pattern all along the hem. He then monopolised the mirror in arranging his hair and making up his face. Feuilly turned his back on the boy and permitted Gigi to help him on with a set of petticoats and to fasten the gown.

"I haven't got an extra pair of shoes, I'm afraid. It does spoil the look, of course, but then, Sylvanie does without. I hate to encourage anyone to do anything improperly." Indeed, the dress had been outfitted with padding where there ought to be breasts, giving it the correct shape without worrying if a hastily stuffed pair of stockings might come loose.

Gigi did everything properly. He was wearing a chemise and stays under his shirt and jewel-toned waistcoats, and when he put on the blue-striped dress, one really might have taken him for a girl from the back, despite his short hair. He had the bearing of one, either naturally or through years of habit. He also had, Feuilly soon discovered, a false chignon that Minette helped him attach with hairpins. Minette settled for the same solution as one of the men downstairs, the scarf and short natural curls of what must have been his favourite period.

"A bit of paint, dear?" Gigi asked Feuilly, and without waiting for an actual answer, began to swipe rouge across his cheeks and dab tinted salve upon his lips. A bit of powder and he was considered done.

Minette and Gigi squabbled a bit over Minette's dominance of the mirror, but at last Gigi was permitted to make himself up and to show Feuilly what his art might work. He had not been so painstaking as Fanny, but the lip salve had been a very nice touch, and he had not made Feuilly look nearly as whorish as it seemed Minette favoured.

"What's to be done with her hair?" Minette finally asked.

"I really think for a night like this, it ought to be admired as is. You are a lucky, lucky thing," Gigi murmured in Feuilly's ear, "and you must show off as much as ever you can. It is not a formal occasion."

Terribly nervous, Feuilly permitted Gigi and Minette, who had at last stopped attempting to flirt with him, to lead him down the stairs and parade him through the room. Gigi was taller than he and the skirt was a bit too long, so he had to hold it off the floor, terrified that he would end up stepping on the hem and ripping the skirt to shreds. The nervousness vanished almost instantly, however, as he was greeted with applause and shrieks of pleasure and even presented to a dumpy middle aged man who was apparently the late-arriving "princess". The princess was the eldest of the group, and when he reappeared later, dressed in an exquisite red and gold 1780s gown complete with panniers and high wig, it was evident that he was indeed royalty of a sort.

Not everyone was as girlish as Gigi and Minette or as theatrical as the princess. Sylvanie, in his flowered dress and heavy boots, was joined by the mustachioed Philippine and the decidedly plain Irène. Gigi, Minette, Nana, and Zora were more girls than they were boys – it was simply more natural to interact with them in the way Feuilly had been pulled to interact with Sylvie and Fanny and Anne-Marie. Indeed, the whole evening was easier, and more comfortable, once he had a glass of wine in his free hand and was being pulled back and forth between competing cliques all wanting to pet and adore him.

At one point, he ended up at Sylvanie's side in a brief moment of quiet amidst the shrieking laughter and playful taunts. "You're married?"

"Ten years. My wife would kill me if she knew about any of this, but I'd go insane if I didn't have it. Do be careful," he warned, though in a rather fatherly manner. "You can go full in, like Nana, or just dip a toe once a week, like me, but if you make the wrong choice early, you'll end up like the princess, in hock for her jewels and living off whatever she can because she's too old to sell herself and too ruined to be honest."

"Is it a fast slide down?" Feuilly worried.

"I wouldn't know. I've got a wife and a business, and I'll do what I must to keep both. Keep an eye on Zora – she's the one I worry for most."

"It is nice that you worry for them. And that you're not like them. They don't like girls, do they?"

"I wouldn't presume to know."

"I'm not like that," Feuilly insisted. "A girl loaned me a dress once, and all I wanted was to bed her."

"The best sex I have with my wife is after I come home from one of these nights. Look, you're pretty as anything, and they will try to make a pet of you. If they invite you for a ball, you need to know that real men come to those because they're after the girls. I'm not saying don't go, just go in with your eyes open."

Feuilly thanked him, but they were interrupted by Hélène, another of the girls from the Tuileries, come to see what had been made of the boy who had come to watch for so long.

"You are a dear, you are such a dear, oh, I would die for your hair, I always thought so. Gigi, you are too brilliant for having brought her!" Hélène kissed him on the cheek, and Feuilly no longer minded the familiarity and was growing accustomed to the feminine pronouns constantly in use. "We have got to set you up properly, dear. That yellow is not so flattering." He called out to the girls in general. "Does anyone know what Marcie is up to?"

"I'm seeing her tomorrow, love."

"Tell her there's a new customer."

"Who is Marcie?"

"Our very sympathetic seamstress. You don't think I just happened to find this at an old clothes dealer's, did you?" Indeed, Hélène was quite tall but impeccably dressed in a pink silk gown that could hardly have been made for a woman of his height.

"Not everyone has the money, dear," Gigi broke in. "However, you must have something that fits properly, and Marcie knows just how to fit a man."

"She'll do errands, too."

"She has a brilliant eye for picking through the secondhand shops, and she can remake anything. This," Gigi theatrically indicated the gown he was wearing, "was initially made for a short fat girl. The hem is a complete addition. Marcie is an absolute genius, even if she is a short fat girl herself."

"You'll only need her to set you up with some proper clothes, but she'll go to a wigmaker, too, if needed." Hélène must have been wearing a very good wig, as well, since neither scarf nor cap obscured the loose topknot at the crown of his head – when he had turned to ask the company about Marcie, Feuilly had seen there was a natural smoothness to the fair hair that Gigi's efforts completely lacked. "She set Gigi up very well indeed."

"Which is why I can't afford a new dress. The hair was a fortune, but it was necessary, don't you agree?"

"You look more real than I ever could," Feuilly admitted.

"You just need some lessons and some time, dear."

The evening was a rather fascinating whirlwind, soaked in wine and perfume. There was laughter and gossip in which Feuilly could not share, but he was petted and adored and given lashings of advice which all boiled down to a need to visit their seamstress. Not everyone played the girl to the hilt the way the most theatrical did, but there was a shared desire to play at various roles, even if the gentleman in the corner working at a bit of embroidery was laughed at for it by no less than the princess himself. Even Zora and Minette, who Gigi only ever called sluts, were perfectly kind to Feuilly and delighted in teaching him how to pose – the twist of the wrist and turn of the head being of utmost importance.

A reticule was passed around for collections, everyone expected to put something in towards the cost of the evening's entertainment. The cost was small compared to what Feuilly often spent for an evening out, and he realised he had only taken two glasses of wine all night – the company was drunk on each other, not on the spirits lined up on the table. He somehow ended the night sitting at the princess' feet, listening to her tell stories of the balls of the past generation, when no one was certain if the soldiers would come in uniform or in drag.

"Things just aren't as brilliant as they used to be."

"I take exception to that!" Philippine cried.

"Then bring us some lancers next time, love. We can't have you all alone."

"It's always about the bloody lancers," he muttered, pouring himself another drink rather than defending his service too loudly. If anything, he looked more ridiculous than Sylvanie, with his reddish moustache a terrible contrast to his high-necked purple dress, but the laughter seemed to be more about the lancers than about his poor sense of style.

Gigi at last pulled Feuilly away. "It's late as anything, and you don't want to get sacked." It was rather a letdown to give back the dress, to wash his face and put on his trousers. "Have we shocked you too badly, dear?"

"Just enough."

Gigi laughed and kissed him on the cheek. "Oh, I knew I was right to bring you along. Come to the gardens on Sunday. We'll get you set up to meet Marcie and she'll get you up proper."

Sylvanie pushed into the room to dress hurriedly, then thrust the bag with his dress at Gigi. "Next week?"

"Next week, dear."

"Find yourself a girl when you go," Sylvanie murmured in Feuilly's ear. "You'll feel a hell of a lot better than if you end up jacking off in a doorway."

Indeed, Feuilly did manage to find a girl just as he thought he would not be able to take another step. She used the same perfume as Minette, but she was short and buxom and in all other ways the opposite of the men with whom he had spent the evening. As he took her up against the damp wall of a closed shop, pushing out between her damp thighs all the energy that had built over the evening, he knew he would be at the Tuileries on Sunday. Sylvanie was right: now that he had begun, he could not imagine continuing to repress what must have always been inside him. And he certainly had to give in if it meant the sex would always be this intense.


	3. Chapter 3

Gigi was wearing the blue-striped dress on Sunday. Zora and Hélène both stopped to chat, and even Nana gave a bit of a wave before walking off with a customer. Feuilly had been pulled completely into the circle. "I had a talk with Marcie," Gigi told Feuilly, "and she's expecting you to come sometime today. Before sundown, as she wants to get a good look at you. I've been singing your praises to the heavens!"

"How could she not?" Zora put in. "Usually when we find someone, they require all sorts of polish, but you've come to us ready-made, as it were. You would not believe what a spotty little thing Minette used to be." It was the sort of comment Gigi might make, but Zora's gossip tended to sound more like factual statements than carefully worded expressions of jealousy, no matter what Gigi tried to say of her.

"You were probably a spotty little thing at sixteen, too," Gigi snapped cattily. "Now, I cannot imagine my darling here ever being spotty. Were you? You cannot have been spotty."

"Some of us are indeed born lucky," Feuilly found himself saying in rather the same tones though in a far lower register – the mannerisms were rubbing off on him far more easily than the voices.

Gigi passed him a carefully folded note. "Marcie is dying to see you."

"And I suppose there's a charge for the visit?"

"Oh no, no, not at all."

"Marcie's a dear, she really is," Zora added.

Gigi explained, "You only pay if you buy something. She'll even look out for things you might like."

"She'll do anything," Hélène added. "She even pierced my ears for me." Feuilly had to admit that he had been jealous of Hélène's pearl earrings ever since he had first seen her in the gardens. These were sadly not the days of Saint-Just, when a man could go around with gold hoops in his ears. "I don't know what we would do without her."

"She knows just what to do for us, and you can pay in installments if necessary. She's terribly good to us." Gigi frowned a bit. "I did have to give her your name. I'm so sorry, dear. I hate using people's real names. They never seem real at all. But I had to tell her something."

"It's fine."

"No, it's not fine," Zora complained.

"You are who you are," Gigi said, "not who someone else said you ought to be. But then, it is easier to name yourself when you know who you are. Marcie will help."

"You should go now," Hélène told him. "If she's been collecting anything, her room will be a treasure box, it really will."

"Lène's trying to tell me to bugger off," Gigi explained.

"I am not," Hélène said with cool deliberation. "I'm telling him he'll regret not spending hours. Come walk with me to the gate, dear."

"I can take a hint," Gigi snapped. Zora tried to pull her along quickly, looking around wildly as if the police might arrest any of them for Gigi's sudden bad mood.

But she would not move until Feuilly kissed her goodbye. "Wednesday, yes?"

"Until Wednesday, dear."

Hélène took Feuilly's arm as if he were escorting her, though she was taller than he was. "Gigi says you've been drawing us for real."

"A little," Feuilly admitted. It was very strange having Hélène on his arm. She was taller than he, and as a woman, not beautiful, but her height was the most masculine thing about her. Instead of Gigi's theatricality, there was natural femininity, both in her bearing and in her speech. Indeed, in many ways, it was more like having a lady rather than a woman of his own class on his arm, though no gentleman would have stooped to this crass level of shop boys and clerks.

"She says you think I'm sad."

"It was one drawing," he tried to explain. "I can only draw what I see in the moment. It was one drawing."

"One drawing. One moment." She smiled, but it was twisted with sadness. "Many moments. Don't be like us if you can help it." She dropped her female voice and muttered, "We're all fucking miserable."

The disconnect between the man and the woman touched Feuilly as much as her words had done. He squeezed her hand and kissed her on the cheek. "I won't let on."

"You're a dear." She patted his hand. "Go see Marcie. She'll set you up properly. If I haven't scared you away."

"I will see you on Wednesday," he promised.

Marcie Lanoue worked out of a room on the top floor of a house off the rue de Provence, behind the Opéra. The ground floor housed a wine merchant; six dark flights of stairs led to Marcie's attic room. Feuilly had climbed many steep staircases before, but the building in which he currently lodged had only four floors. He was breathing rather heavily when at last the final hall opened out before him. He knocked at the first door on the left, as the note had instructed.

The light from the window facing the courtyard flooded the hall and caused him to blink several times before he could see the woman who had answered his knock. She was short and fat, as the girls had said, something above thirty in all likelihood, with a plain face and thin blonde hair. "You're Mlle Feuilly, aren't you?"

It was strange to be addressed as "mademoiselle" by an actual woman, but Feuilly pushed aside his unease. "Yes. Gigi sent me?"

"Come in. Let's see what I can do for you." The room was small but whitewashed and brightly lit from the sun streaming in the open window. Another woman sat on the bed against the wall, stitching something he could not quite make out, her needle flashing in the sunlight. "You are a beauty. Gigi was excited as anything, and I can see why. Let's start with some measurements. Do you mind taking your shirt off?" It was a question, not a politely phrased order, as if some of her customers must mind very much being asked to remove an article of clothing that ordinarily concealed their male bodies. He glanced at the other woman, but she kept her head down over her sewing. "Don't let Virginie bother you. She only cares when the dresses come out." Virginie looked up at the word "dresses". She was darker than Marcie and possibly older, but with a round flat face and prominent round eyes, obviously simple. "Not yet," Marcie told her.

Feuilly had never been measured properly for anything in his life, but he removed his shirt and permitted Marcie to do whatever she liked. He was surprised to see that she kept detailed notes of everything from his height to the circumference of his arms.

"How do you make your living? I'm not prising. Your hands are soft, and you've not a bad complexion, but you must do something, and every sort of work has its dangers for this masquerade. I'm not asking where, or even what, just how in the most general way possible."

"Artistic work," he said.

"Chisel?"

"Brush."

"You're as well off as any of them, then. No wonder your complexion is decent; you're not outside enough to ruin it. Do make sure you take the air as often as you can to avoid turning sallow, but I think you know well enough to avoid turning brown. You can get dressed. I've got a few questions for you, then we'll see what we can make of everything."

She had a couple of chairs, so sitting close together, and in hushed tones for Virginie's sake, she led him through questions he had never before considered.

"Tell me the first time you remember wanting to dress up."

It was odd to be addressed in the formal rather than the familiar to talk about these things – the girls always used the familiar with everyone they thought in any way akin to them – but it also somehow made it easier to talk to her because she permitted that distance. "I don't remember being young enough to be in skirts properly. I remember . . ." He thought for a moment. How far back did he remember? "I remember wondering what it might be like, but I never did anything about it. The man who raised me made me put on a dress one day with the idea that a little girl begging in the street would be more profitable than a little boy. I just liked the way the skirt swirled around. Do you ask everyone about this?"

"Everyone who comes to me. You're playing a role, you see, and to costume you, I've got to know what that role is. There's no point in coming to me if you're just going to throw on the first thing that's presented to you and be satisfied with it. All of you have some things in common, I've learned, but the differences are most important. You wouldn't really want me to give you the same things as I give Gigi, would you?"

Feuilly smiled – somehow, he could not imagine Gigi tolerating that, no matter how easily she would loan a dress. To loan something was to put that person in your debt; to own the same dress would be to devalue the merchandise. "She must have her way, mustn't she?"

"Lord, yes, and on the thinnest of margins."

"I hope I'll prove a better client, though I can't pay much."

"That's very sweet of you to say. Now, you grew up. A handsome enough man, from what I can see, though perhaps a little too refined for ordinary tastes. But certain things were not set aside with childhood. Why?"

"They were. It was all a lark, really, not even my idea at all." He explained Anne-Marie's plan, how he was chosen, and while he did not admit in words his admiration for Fanny's lavender silk gown, it was obvious from the way he described it in detail and passed over Caret as if he had been a fly rather than a wolf.

"And how do you explain your hair to people?"

"A well-placed punch in the jaw can shut up any idiot."

"That's all?"

"It does shut down the implication that I'm anything less than a man. I cut it once. It doesn't behave the way fashionable gentlemen with their false curls would lead you to expect. It sticks straight out from my head and looks an utter fright. I can only control it when it's long." Somehow, he managed to register this complaint without a single sign of the effeminacy in which the girls so excelled.

"Very well, then. What is it about the dressing up that you like best? Dresses, hair, jewelry, stays . . . Or is it not the clothes at all?" she added sympathetically.

"It's the clothes," he insisted. "I'm not that way. I thought it was just the skirts, at first, but the rich ladies in their evening gowns are so lucky."

"The silk? The trim? The gloves? The neckline?"

"Bare neck, bare chest, bare arms – it's incredibly freeing."

"Freeing. That's generally what the men say."

"Are some men and some girls?"

"You can tell by looking."

"What am I?"

She paused a moment before answering. "You're not a girl. But there's something stops you from being quite a man. Well," she continued rather more brightly, "let us talk about what you need from me. If you can only afford one dress, it will be an evening gown, because it is what you most need. You don't want gloves, which is good. You've no idea the lengths I go for some of the girls. I cannot get you shoes. None of you ever have small enough feet, and you'll ruin the dancing slippers you really want. Dancing slippers are good for one dance, no more."

"Really?"

"That's why only rich girls and actresses have them, because someone else is paying for them. You'll just have to live without pink shoes the way most of us do."

"I never really thought about shoes," Feuilly admitted.

"It's all simple enough. A pair of men's dress slippers will do perfectly well for you, with silk stockings, of course. Since you're getting an evening dress, you'll want a shawl. Particularly when winter comes. So at the very least, you'll need a dress, petticoats, and a shawl. You may or may not want stays. They'll give you posture, and they'll hold the padding in place, but they aren't a necessity unless you like the feel of them."

"I don't think I can afford anything more than the basics."

"I accept payment in installments, if that helps."

"Not much," he admitted. He really could not afford to put too much towards an activity that would bring him no profit.

"Then I suppose we should talk fees. There are a number of things I can do. I can find an old dress in a style and colour that will suit and tailor it to fit you properly. I can find an old dress in a fabric that will suit you and cut a new dress out of it. I can start from scratch and purchase fabric and create a wholly new garment. The cost is based in large part on my cost. I can make a very simple muslin frock for far less than it would cost to recut a silk acquired through various means." She laid out a range of prices that almost caused Feuilly to choke until he reminded himself that he had once paid more for an overcoat than it could cost for a dress, should Marcie have a lucky day at the Temple. But then he would have to have petticoats, too, and shoes, and a shawl – it seemed neverending. But all the girls had at least something, and he did not like the implication that he was so much poorer than Gigi.

"I think I can come up with twenty francs. Maybe more later."

"We shall see what can be done. Virginie, you can bring out the box," Marcie called to the other woman. In a flash, like an excited child, Virginie dropped her sewing and retrieved a box from under the bed. "Do you mind if she helps you look?" Marcie asked Feuilly.

"Not at all." It was less unsettling, and in the end terribly fun, to let the poor woman participate. She was very much like a child, though she hardly spoke.

"For colour, I would recommend against yellow with your complexion, and greens are too finicky for me to wholly recommend to anyone for evening. The lavender you liked so much must have looked very well on you. I would also recommend any shade of blue or a decent pink. Red would be a bit much."

Feuilly assented to all her advice. He had no notion of choosing his clothes other than that he hated looking too flash, which he assumed was what she meant when she said red would be a bit much.

Only then did Marcie begin to present images for his benefit. The box held a collection not only of fashion plates but of various other prints, most in strict black and white, including several series of actor portraits. Styles ranged from the latest low waisted heavy skirts to the diaphanous muslins of the Directory all the way back to the unsettlingly wide and elaborate silhouettes of the days before the revolution.

They started with the most recent, Marcie noting the numbers of the pictures that most attracted his attention. There were a few coloured plates here showing delicate pink gowns with delicious swags of silk and rosettes, blue gowns with rows of lace in the skirt, even a gown covered in little leaves that must be individual pieces of satin that would flicker and shake in the candlelight at a ball – it was either the ugliest thing anyone had ever conceived or the most brilliant. It was certainly too flash for him, but he did rather wonder if any of the more theatrical girls had managed to acquire something similar. One dress in an uncoloured print looked as if it must have been the inspiration for Fanny's lovely gown. The decoration of the skirt had been simplified by the real seamstress, but everything else was exact. "How much would a gown like that cost?" he asked in curiosity.

"New, in new silk rather than reclaimed silk, five hundred at the very least, I should think."

Fanny was indeed terribly lucky to have had a friend who was maid in a rich household and managed hand-me-downs of such quality and glamour.

They moved backwards in time, the waists of the dresses rising higher and the skirts growing straighter. There was something deeply attractive in the narrower skirts, however, how they must flow more naturally over so many fewer petticoats. Lace was even more common, both day and evening, whether in as many as eight or ten rows on a skirt or shot through the length of a sleeve or even as an elaborate collar. One plate Feuilly could not help staring at showed a beautiful woman in a lovely evening gown, trimmed with lace at the bust and sleeves and hem with a thick embroidered vine along the bottom of the skirt, but with what must have been starched lace or lace stretched over a stiff frame to create an elaborate collar framing her neck and face. It was not a style that he would have wanted for himself, but it was certainly attractive on the model.

At the turn of the century, it seemed ladies must have gone about nearly undressed – there was no quickly discernible difference between the gowns for day and for evening, all of them having low-cut necklines and straight silhouettes and many having such a diaphanous quality that they were often drawn as if, facing into the wind, the wind could push the dress into their cunts. One could so clearly see how it clung to the legs, that in such a dress, a man's prick would be in constant sight. Yet the delicacy of the fabric attracted him, particularly when Marcie explained that most of these, despite the line drawings and classical design, were not actually meant to be white. "Every colour of the rainbow," she told him. "And that one is designed so that the underdress is white with a bright tunic sort of thing on top of it." There were dresses that were deadly plain, and a dress with a Greek key pattern at the skirt and bodice that was certainly a model for Minette's lovely frock, and dresses that needed no ornamentation at all because they were so audacious in cut. A few dresses had no sleeves at all. "Oh, and this one, the sleeves and neck are meant to be so thin you can see through them." Many examples seemed simple, just thin muslin gathered immediately under the breasts, but the effect was beautiful with so much less effort than the modern styles.

Structure and design returned in the last set of prints, some of which predated the Revolution. His eyes lingered on what must have been the inspiration for the princess' elaborate gown. "Oh, that. That was Mme Mairet in _Don Giovanni_. I sometimes find the skirts left over, people not sure what to do with just the bit that goes under the elaborate overdress. The dresses have mostly been cut down by now because they've enough fabric to do something with."

"Do you know the Princess?"

"Of course. He got me started. Stole that very gown himself from the wardrobe, if you can believe it. I had to smuggle the panniers out myself."

"Baskets?"

"Tied on your hips. Brocade is stiff, but not stiff enough to stand out that far by itself. I've still got a few of the trimmings, if you'd like to see."

"I would."

"Virginie, bring him you doll."

It may have been strange that a woman of her age had a doll, but then she was not really a woman of her age. The doll was an old, battered fashion doll, re-dressed in a narrow gown of red stripes corresponding to what must have been the underskirt. The fabric was wonderfully thick, too thick to be suitable for the doll, with a slight sheen to it. "It must have looked a treat under the footlights."

"Mustn't it? Fabrice said he had to rescue it before someone cut it down like they cut off Marie Antoinette's head. I don't entirely blame him. We'd started going through the racks ever since rates were down. We had to dress the girls in something. But at least I never got sacked."

Feuilly suddenly realised what she was saying. "You used to work at the opera?"

"I was with the Ambigu-Comique for five years and another three at the Italiens. Fabrice was a dresser at the Italiens. But my mother died, and Virginie can't be left alone in the evenings. So here we are. She can make her own living, nearly, but can you imagine sending her in to pick up or drop off her work? They'd have her leaving without a sou, thanking her for the great favour she'd done them, and happy to do it, too. But she can't be left, so here we are. Fabrice sent me work, and now it seems we're dressers to all the girls in Paris."

"All the pretty girl boys," Virginie added, the first words he had heard her speak other than an occasional sigh over a particularly elaborate fashion plate. He handed her back her doll and she hugged it fiercely.

Marcie shooed her away so they could talk business. "For twenty francs, I can't do much unless I find a brilliant deal at one of the old clothes dealers' stalls. You're not as tall or as muscular as some, which does make it easier, but every gown requires adjustments, fittings. For thirty, I can start to make promises. For forty, I can run up a simple Directory gown, white muslin, and may be able to add a bit of trim. A chemise and a petticoat can be done for five or so, but you're on your own for shoes and stockings. A dress shoe without buckles will never go amiss. Light-coloured stockings for evening. You'll be hard pressed to set up properly at less than sixty francs."

"Do many of the girls use older models for their gowns?"

"About half, I'd say. No, more. Some of the girls who try to live full time like their bit of dress up, too."

"Live full time?"

"You'll figure it out soon enough. But yes, really it's very good I was with the theatres for so many years. After dressing fifty supers in Turkish robes for _Abduction from the Seraglio_, there's very little I can't do. Oh, I nearly forgot. Breasts."

"What?"

"Breasts. Yes or no? I mean, do you want them or not? You wouldn't be the first to ask for a flat-chested gown."

"I – uhm -" He had to think. He had never considered whether or not breasts, for himself, would enter into anything. Yet it was the obvious difference between wishing to wear skirts and wishing to dress as a woman. But anything that he had admired required breasts, particularly the high waisted gowns where otherwise there would be no bodice. "Yes. I think I need them."

"Built in or will you create your own?"

"There's a price difference, isn't there?"

"Of course. I can build them in for a couple francs, really – it's just a matter of rolling a couple of old stockings and stitching them to a pocket inside. But it does affect what I get you, you see. If the bodice is too low, it will never look right because it was cut for décolletage. If you prefer to use undergarments, then the straps of your stays have to be thin enough and placed properly to go under the gown. Do you see?"

"What if I said I'd do whatever the dress requires?"

"Oh, you are a good customer. Gigi also said you needed hairpins, so I've picked up a packet, and do you want paint?"

For a franc, Feuilly left with hairpins, powder, rouge, kohl, and the promise that Marcie would find something for him within the next week. He could not decide what he most hoped she could find: heavy satin that would swish with every step, or thin muslin that would flow softly around his thin frame. The possibilities were simply too delicious to be able to choose between them.

He spent all evening experimenting with making himself up. The kohl had been thrown in as a gift – no one else had wanted it, but as Marcie said, "You, unlike the rest, know what you're doing with a brush." The rouge, so very bright, was actually harder to master than the kohl. He could make his eyes look deliciously heavy and eastern, but it was going to take a great deal more practice blending the carmine so that he did not look like an Indian on the warpath. It was a very pleasant evening playing with his paints, despite his failures. Painting himself was so much more interesting than drawing himself.

Come Wednesday, Feuilly was yet again forced to borrow from Gigi, but a few days later he received a note from Marcie: "Come on Sunday and let us see what we can do."

She had made a decent haul that week and had five girls crowded into the tiny room to make their selections. "Let the new girl pick first; she doesn't have a single thing, you horrid greedy children." The yellow satin was of course not for him, nor was a green striped day dress that Hélène was already clinging to the way Virginie clasped her doll. A simple dove-grey cotton dress with low neck and high waist was rather tempting, as was a slightly yellowed frock printed with purple flowers, but more because they existed and might be affordable than because they were otherwise ideal. He even had Marcie shoo everyone into the hall so he might try on the dove grey which, while not fitting entirely like a glove, had definite promise. It was a first dress, after all, and there might be others, more perfect, later. It was certainly far better than the flowered thing Sylvanie wore every week. But Sylvanie was not trying to do the thing properly, and even as he could see Virginie's grinning face in the cheval glass Marcie had uncovered so he might examine himself, Feuilly knew he could only do the thing properly or not at all.

"How much?"

"I'll have to add another row of trim to make up the length, bring it in a little through the waist, but on the whole it's in remarkable shape. I paid fifteen. It'll be another ten or so, for the work, which I know is a bit more than you were looking to spend. The flowered one only cost me seven, but I really bought it for the fabric." She showed him a tear at the hem and the complete lack of buttons. "I can do it up for you easily enough, but it will take me longer and may come to nearly the same price."

Feuilly examined himself carefully. It was nice, certainly, but twenty-five francs was a lot of money to spend on something that was merely nice and not perfect. Some things simply could not be done both properly and cheaply, he feared. "You said last week that you could do a Directory muslin for forty?" What was another fifteen francs when more than two weeks wages were going to be spent in any case?

"It depends on the dress. A basic muslin is fairly cheap, but if you'd like the thin stuff you can see through, that can go for well over a hundred a yard, and that isn't even for the best quality stuff coming from India. Virginie, get me the box. Show me what you want."

Sitting down, still wearing the dove grey dress, which felt very nice yet was not really growing on him at all, he flipped through the box until he found what he knew he wanted: a muslin gown without sleeves, the neck coming to a deep v shape emphasised by a thin ribbon or something equally simple, the skirt straight through the front but heavily gathered in back to create a lush swirl of muslin around the legs and feet. "This one. Forty francs?"

"Forty won't quite get you that. That's definitely a fine muslin over the top of a heavier muslin. I can do something similar, but I also recommend that the skirt be a little looser in front if you don't want to show off your manhood to every comer, and the neck should not be quite so abrupt if we have to add the breasts in ourselves. But I can definitely do very like for forty. That bit of trim is really very nice. What colour do you want? If you could afford more, something gilt would be divine, but that could run to forty in itself."

"Lavender," he insisted without a second thought.

"Give me two weeks, and I'll need half in advance. We'll work out how you can pay the rest."

Feuilly paid out the twenty francs he had brought with him in the hopes that something would strike his fancy, then he returned the dove grey dress that had completely paled in comparison with the idea that had lodged in his mind. He did not even mind when Zora made a late grab at the grey dress for herself; it was not that Zora was taking his leavings, but that he was going to manage to have something new for the first time in his life, something new and just for him, something he had been permitted to select and would adore no matter how it turned out.

It took two weeks – Marcie was as quick as she could be with first dresses – and every moment of those two weeks was a torture. Ebrard gave him a look at work one day, asking if there was something in the works because he seemed to be turning sly on them. Feuilly lied and tried to control his expressions better. It was hard enough that Ebrard had essentially started him on this path, his sister being the catalyst; lying to him when he had been a friend for so long was worse. But the boss had been giving them both funny looks ever since the lie about janissaries being eunuchs, and it would not do to have more suspicion descend on their table. Feuilly had to admit that keeping his eyebrows plucked like a sissy was not helping matters at all, but he did his work, kept his head down, and when it was not a Wednesday, sat in a café most of the evening if Ebrard or Picard asked. And after his fitting, when Marcie had to make some adjustments and finish the whole thing, he managed to find Fanny, who was perfectly willing to be an appropriate outlet for his exhilaration so long as she did not know the precipitating cause.

When at last the dress was done, it succeeded in every way Feuilly had hoped it would. It was worth every sou of the forty-one francs it had cost in the end to see the look in Zora's eyes when he wore it to a Wednesday evening. Much of the early love and praise faded in the utter jealousy he now inspired, having learned several of their tricks. Perhaps Gigi had been right about Zora all along. The pet in grecian curls and heavy eastern eyes and incredibly daring frock had outpaced several of his teachers, and Feuilly took even greater pleasure in Zora's hate than in her initial friendliness. The hate had been earned, a sign of success, and when Gigi asked if he had a name yet, Feuilly smiled evenly and answered, "Victoire."

Gigi, at least, never stopped petting him, nor did Hélène. Feuilly's victory was as much about their taste as it was about his. He did not mind if he spent his evenings being petted only by them. They appreciated his natural talents.


End file.
